Spat with Trump distracts from Pope Leo’s Africa tour
The Pope used his Africa debut to address broader global issues – but left many local questions unanswered.
Pope Leo XIVth’s 10-day African tour, completed this week, was overshadowed by a running spat with US President Donald Trump. But the pope himself kept the attention off by focusing on broader issues rather than the specifics of the four countries he visited – Algeria, Cameroon, Angola and Equatorial Guinea.
The Trump issue was prompted by Pope Leo’s earlier criticism of the ‘absurd and inhuman violence’ of the Iran war. Trump then labelled the pontiff a ‘very liberal person’ who was ‘weak on crime’ and supported nuclear weapons. Leo said he was not afraid of Trump.
Then when the Pope made anti-war remarks in Cameroon, saying the ‘masters of war pretend not to know that it takes only a moment to destroy, yet a lifetime is often not enough to rebuild,’ and about a ‘world ravaged by a handful of tyrants,’ many commentators believed that referred to Trump.
He later told journalists on his plane that it did not, and he had written the speech before leaving Rome. But it was clearly a case of if the cap fits, wear it.
Perhaps Leo’s visit suffered not only from the distraction of his contretemps with Trump, but from too-high expectations. Some thought he might directly and openly tackle authoritarianism, rife in all four countries and corruption, high in at least Angola, Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon.
Leo chose four authoritarian states for his debut African visit – and opted for parable over confrontation
Some expected he would address homosexuality as his predecessor Francis I had done, giving his blessing to same-sex couples, to the dismay of many conservative clergy and congregants in socially conservative – indeed often blatantly homophobic – Africa.
Some reports suggested he would address slavery on visiting the Church of Our Lady of Muxima (Mama Muxima), built by Portuguese colonisers in Angola as part of a fortress complex and which became a transatlantic slave trade hub. Genealogists say Leo, the first American pope, had some ancestors who were slavers and some who were slaves.
Some of these issues were mentioned, though subtly; others weren’t, at least not publicly or explicitly.
The choice of Africa for his debut visit makes sense – it is where some 20% of Catholics live, and it’s the faith’s fastest-growing continent. The choice of countries was less obvious, though the selection of Algeria, the least Catholic of the four, was the clearest call. Leo, as former head of the Augustinian Order, noted that St Augustine had been Bishop of Hippo (now Annaba) in Algeria.
Algeria was also clearly important for the Pope to raise the issue of harmony among faiths and to criticise religious fundamentalism. He made a point of meeting not only Algeria’s small Christian community, but also members of the majority Muslim community. He noted that Augustine ‘represents a very important bridge in interreligious dialogue, and he is deeply loved in his homeland.’
In Bamenda, the sharpest expectations centred on a direct engagement with Cameroon’s Anglophone crisis
The other three countries were evidently chosen for their large, or at least relatively large, Catholic congregations. In 2010 Angola was over 44% Catholic, Cameroon over 33% and Equatorial Guinea over 80%.
None, though, is a shining example of democracy, with deeply entrenched, corrupt, authoritarian leaders or parties, and scant human rights and other values that one might consider dear to the Catholic Church.
Was that perhaps the point, that he chose to visit and address those needing conversion rather than preaching to the converted? If so, his messages remained carefully general.
Addressing President Paul Biya, the nonagenarian head of state starting another seven years in office, and officials and diplomats, he did drop a gentle hint by saying ‘serving one’s country means dedicating oneself … [to] … the common good of all people in the nation … the majority of the population and the minorities.’
This was particularly pertinent in a country with a large Francophone majority and a small Anglophone minority, and where the state’s violent suppression of Anglophone grievances has fuelled an insurgency.
He also advised that ‘transparency in the management of public resources and respect for the rule of law are essential to restoring trust’ and that ‘the chains of corruption … must be broken.’
Expectations were that he would address the Anglophone crisis most directly in Bamenda, the northwest region of Cameroon, ravaged by years of conflict. His diatribe against the ‘masters of war’ that many commentators presumed was a reference to Trump, was at least partly directed to local conditions. He praised community peacemakers.
He berated ‘moral, social and political corruption, seen above all in the management of wealth, which hinders the development of institutions and infrastructure.’
In Angola he did envision ‘a country where old divisions are overcome once and for all, where hatred and violence disappear, and where the scourge of corruption is healed by a new culture of justice and sharing.’
The pontiff’s subtlety – frustrating to journalists and commentators – may be the only idiom available to him
At the Mama Muxima shrine he obliquely referenced slavery by noting that for centuries many had prayed there ‘in times of joy and also in moments of sorrow and great suffering in the history of this country.’
Yet his lens was generally more global. In Yaoundé he berated ‘the darker side of the environmental and social devastation caused by the relentless pursuit of raw materials and rare earths.’
In Luanda, addressing President João Lourenço, other officials and diplomats, he berated foreign interests that laid claim to the country’s material riches. ‘How much suffering, how many deaths, how many social and environmental disasters are brought about by this logic of extractivism!’
In Malabo, addressing President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, surely one of Africa’s most brutal and corrupt leaders, as well as civic officials and diplomats, that Pope Leo’s view was widest. He said: ‘Exclusion is the new face of social injustice. The gap between a small minority – 1% of the population – and the overwhelming majority has widened dramatically.’
So it was the ‘imperative duty’ of all civil authorities to ‘dismantle the obstacles to integral human development.’
Expectations may simply have been too high. Perhaps the way of the Pope is to speak in the long register of history, not the short one of news cycles. The pontiff’s subtlety – frustrating to journalists and commentators – may be the only idiom available to him.
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